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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

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Product Info

  • EAN: 9781400052172
  • Manufacturer: Crown

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  • ISBN13: 9781400052172
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

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  • Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
  • Summary: Putting a Face on HeLa
  • Comment: Despite my years of studying and teaching math and science, I am always caught off guard when I discover I missed an important story. Granted, my expertise is in physics and math. Still, after reading about Henrietta Lacks, I am surprised at how such a discovery could have eluded my attention for so long. Fortunately, Rebecca Skloot's book has rectified that omission.

    How many advances in medicine over the course of the last half century have depended upon the use of cultured cells? Their use in drug trials, radiation tests, fundamental cell research (like the discoveries of chromosomes and DNA), and more, is crucial to the advancement of our understanding. Yet it was not that long ago that many scientists despaired of ever finding human cells that would survive being cultured. That all changed in 1951 when a tissue sample was taken from a tumor on the cervix of Henrietta Lacks, and the HeLa cell line was born.

    It seems like a story that wouldn't necessarily take an entire book to tell; however, Ms. Lacks story is one of murky medical ethics with which we still struggle. Ill during a time when medical experimentation was often done on people without their understanding or consent, this problem was particularly bad in the African-American community--think of the Tuskegee syphilis study. And though there seems to be no evidence that the doctors at Johns Hopkins didn't do everything possible at the time to save Ms. Lacks from her particularly virulent cancer (a quality that made those cells able to survive in culture), it is also true that the sample was taken without informed consent and many millions of dollars have been made selling her cells while her descendents have never seen a dime and struggle in poverty. It begs the question that we still haven't sufficiently answered: who has the rights over your body tissues once they leave your body?

    But do not be fooled: this is not a book of dry history and medical ethics. It is a dynamic story of people and science. We learn about Ms. Lacks and her descendents; in particular, her daughter, Deborah, who wants so much to know the mother she lost and see her mother recognized for what she contributed to science. We meet the scientists who worked so hard to come up with cultured cells in the first half of the 20th century. And we get to know the author, Ms. Skloot, who herself becomes a part of the story she is telling.

    What we end up with is a very readable account that puts a face on the scientific shorthand. HeLa is Henrietta Lacks. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of scientific advance these days, it is easy to forget the ethical murkiness that brought about many of these triumphs and the people who were crucial to that success, test subjects and patients put aside and forgotten. Ms. Skloot has done us a great service in her long pursuit of this story.
  • Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
  • Summary: Wow...
  • Comment: This is an amazing book. I am so happy that I've read it. This is a book that anyone struggling with chronic illness should read. I read through the first half of the bok within a day, tehn I had to set it down for a few days so I could digest everything that I had just read. Great book.
  • Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
  • Summary: Humanizing medical research
  • Comment: Author writes lucidly and brings to life Henrietta Lacks, the source of HeLa cells. Rebecca Skloot's first book is a winner. I couldn't put it down. She explains the science of tissue culture and weaves into it the story of a black family and their trials and the injustices they suffered.
  • Customer Rating: Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5Average rating of 5/5
  • Summary: wonderfully addictive and spellbinding
  • Comment: from the first page I was hooked and stayed up too late many a night because I didn't want to put it down.
  • Customer Rating: Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5
  • Summary: shameful medical practice
  • Comment: I found the beginning of this utterly captivating, very hard to put down. Skloot does a good job of addressing the science behind the subject without making it too technical. The part where the story derails is when the family gets involved, particularly the time spent with Mrs. Lacks' daughter, Deborah. The author seems to focus more on the struggles of Deborah and her apparent disabilities, maybe in a human-interest sort of way, but I felt that it began to become a bit more exploitative. I think it is very important to shine a light on the unethical way the black population was treated by the medical profession and how shameful it is that the Lacks family has not benefited in any way from the massive scale of production of the HeLa cell line. If this book had merely contained the first half, or left the drama of the second half out or at least shortened it some, I think this book would have appealed to me more as a whole. I would certainly recommend this to friends, but with a disclaimer of the soap-opera like drama that comes in at the end.

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